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ChrisHallquist comments on White Lies - Less Wrong
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I find being generally known to be unwilling to lie highly useful in many situations. Less than a week ago I spontaneously volunteered a compliment to someone who politely thanked me, only to then double-take and remark that she thought that I wouldn't have said it if I hadn't meant it. Consequentialists who think that consequentialists should be able to solve the precommitment problem and be effectively honest nonetheless, in real life, cite my deontological prohibition on lying as a good reason to trust me. I am fairly good at omission, and have successfully avoided outing closeted people of my acquaintance who make that preference known to me, though I never felt the need to go through a similar period myself.
Arbitrary people are not obligated to trust me to handle the truth correctly. If for some reason I'm giving the impression that I'm the equivalent of a Nazi at the door or a homophobic parent, I see no reason from their perspective that they should confess to me these secrets even if I ask. This does not mean that we will be friends if I learn that this has been happening. There are plenty of things people might choose to do for reasonable or even unavoidable reasons that mean we will not be friends.
This post makes me less interested in inviting you over for dinner again. What has to happen in your head for you to be willing to come to my house and eat food I cook and participate in charming conversation and then blithely slash our tires if we ask the wrong question because you think we're going to become hysterical or behave immorally should we gain access to information or be told that we cannot have it? Why does that sound like a welcoming environment you'd like to visit, with us on such a supposed hair trigger about mere true facts? Why should you sound like a guest I'd prefer when you say this? Whatever it is, I don't like or want it closer to me. You may make that tradeoff, but imploring the people around you to "accept" others' "right" to lie to them seems like a kind of fucked-up way to attempt to cheat the tradeoff.
There are some communities I consider incredibly welcoming where I don't imagine by any means that anything I say will be received well just because it's true. On the other hand, a subculture that not only has idiosyncratic social norms but aggressively shuns anyone who follows mainstream norms, likening violations of their idiosyncratic norms to slashing people's tires... that sounds incredibly unwelcoming to me.
"Hair trigger about mere true facts" is hyperbole. But the truth is that the overwhelming majority of the human race consists of people who sometimes respond badly to being told "mere true facts." Insisting you are an exception is quite a brag. It's possible, but the prior is low. I'd give members of the LessWrong community better odds of being such an exception than I'd grant to most people, but I don't think every member of the community, or even every prominent member of the community, qualifies. In some cases I think I've seen strong evidence to the contrary. (For reasons that should be obvious, please do not ask me to name names.) Because of this, I'm not going to default to treating most members of the LessWrong community radically differently than how I treat non-LessWrongers.